Health Revolution. Maria Borelius

beginning to talk about the need for individually tailored treatments, and all doctors know that people respond differently to different medicines. But Ayurveda has always held that point of view.

      ‘We also believe that food is medicine,’ says the doctor.

      ‘How do you know that?’

      ‘From observation,’ she says. ‘If you look at enough people and see the same things over and over again, you can see a pattern.’

      In Ayurveda, food is even considered to be the most important medication, more important than everything else, simply because we humans eat so often and take in numerous nutrients through our food. These nutritional elements, my doctor says, have the full capacity to either build, protect and heal the body or create stress and disease.

      This way of looking at the connection between food and health in many ways resembles the conclusions that conventional medical science is now beginning to draw. The difference is that most doctors who are educated in academic medicine and practice in Europe and the United States barely talk about this with their patients.

      At the end of my first Ayurvedic medical visit, I receive my personal treatment schedule.

06:00	walk
07:15	meditation
09:00–12:00	treatment
16:00	meditation

      In addition, we’ll be attending the course for several hours each day, and we’re given a number of different tasks to do during the week of the course, in groups or individually; we also need time to try to illuminate deeper sides of ourselves, or what our course leaders call our ‘shadow sides’, to find out how they affect our ability to work. All of this in one week.

      That’s a lot to do, I think as I move into my simple bungalow, which is situated close to other little bungalows. You might describe them as an Indian kind of little cabin, in the middle of a semi-jungle of vegetation with abundant, large green leaves. For some reason, there are three ominous ravens watching over my patio. There is a plastic table and two aluminium chairs, and along the side, a washing line sways in the wind. The ravens come flapping in with their powerful beaks as soon as I’ve had breakfast the next day. They eat everything, even the paper label of the tea bag. I see a few monkeys climbing around a little farther away.

      Here wild herbs grow everywhere you go, because the health resort grows all the plants that are used in treatment and food preparation. The next day I look at the elegant handwritten signs that have been stuck into the ground, to see if anything looks familiar. Abutilon indicum? Some kind of mallow-like herb? Acacia catechu seems to grow into a mighty tree. There’s a thin shrub with stubby little leaves that I don’t recognise at all. I ask a passing doctor in a white coat about the plant.

      ‘Ah, that’s a guggulu. Very good for haemorrhoids.’

      People are sitting in a long line on the veranda of the treatment house, waiting. Women, men, Indians, Europeans, Asians, old and young. Doctors in white coats bustle around a large table on which a bunch of papers with scrawled notes are spread out. It’s time for the female head doctor to assign the therapists who work at the centre to those of us who have just arrived.

      There are rows of Indian therapists sitting on the veranda. Almost all of them are women, dressed in yellow treatment clothes, a tunic and trousers – sweet, soft women with gentle smiles. The only therapist who’s standing is a completely different type of person. She stands with her feet widely planted and arms crossed over her chest. She has an eagle nose, a Clint Eastwood gaze – though with brown eyes – and she looks like she would take no prisoners. I hope I don’t get her, I think sulkily, like a schoolchild who doesn’t want to end up with the strict teacher.